Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Cyclotourism in Paris

Alex Singer founded his bicycle brand and workshop in 1938. The shop still exists in same place and  everything is still live and well. They still use epic Reynolds tubing to build up their custom road, cyclocross and randonneur frames. Gruppos are Dura Ace, Campagnolo Record and Sram Red. "Columbus changes everything every year, measurement, thickness, shapes etc. We do not want any hassle and that's why we don't use it". Alex Singer sells road frames separately but cyclotourist aka randonneur they do not, because the challenging build and frame adjustments. Thanks to shop people to let me see where steel work magic happens. I got nice pair of Grand Bois 650B tires to help my future projects. Rando Boutique is worth visiting too.

20 000 pieces of Velib city bikes are spreaded around the Paris to be used easily as rental transportation. As said in earlier postings, in metro you see city tunnels but with bicycle you see the city outdoors. System is cleaver and easy to use. Btw. these bikes needs to be serviced and repaired occasionally and they use very cleaver space to make bigger repair jobs possible. In Paris they use a bigger boat or barges, sailing in Seine river to do these jobs. Velib is nice and easy way to investigate Paris more deeply. I had really nice ride from Bastille via Quai de Valmy to Paris science center and Pompidou center.

Narrow streets and big traffic jams has developed Paris personal transportation systems towards two wheels. During our three night visit we saw lots of mopeds and motorcycles or motos as they say in France. Bicycle amount has growing too since last visit which is nice but comparing really bicycle friendly cities in Holland and Danmark they still love they cars in Paris.

Paris is great city for for food, wine, antiques, fashion and art.



Monday, November 12, 2012

Friday, November 9, 2012

Bicycle Repairmen

Bicycles are build, repaired and serviced. Here are some nice samples of this kind of businesses.

Anvil Bikeworks are doing great looking jigs for frame building.

Bike service is done by Velofixer in Brussels.

Monty Python's superhero is doing repairs.


Thursday, November 1, 2012

Bikebulance

Some of us are by nature Florence Nightingale's or Mother Teresa's, we take care of other people life and health. Other ones, just do not care. It is a big difference in healthcare between modern western countries and countries where western world people used colonialism and imperialism to grow their prosperity by submitting locals.

Good invention to help healthcare is bicycle ambulance, a trailer pulled by normal bicycle. It is effective, cheap and really practical. Type bicycle ambulance in your favorite search engine and you get several projects in results.

BTW.   In Daniel Defoe's book Robinson Crusoe, the main character named native friend, which he just set free from cannibals hands, as Friday. It is funny detail but is it really a rough example of colonialism?